Quote from: ggroy;321145Overpowered characters can get boring after awhile.

Characters are only over powered if the game hasn't kept up with them. Imagine a game about martial arts fighters. First they win the city contest, then the state, then nationals, and finally the world. Then they travel into other worlds or fight aliens, get powers, and do dragon ball stuff.

If characters that are powerful enough to fight aliens are still fucking with locals, of course it will be boring.

I think a lot of GMs just aren't adaptable enough to deal with the changing nature of a game.

Quote from: Jeffrey Straszheim;321161Perhaps you are saying that the power itself has less meaning if I didn't work for it.

Yes, sorry, that's how I meant it.

QuoteIt seemed like pretty "meaningful" play to me, but YMMV.

Yeah, that seemed like a pretty good example.

The problem, IME, is that if you have ridiculously powerful characters, players have no issue slinging that power around without any thought as to the repercussions.

It's more a matter of approach, too. If you start off as a badass right out of the gate, 4e-style, then the fact that you're a badass loses a lot of meaning - you take it for granted that you're awesome. Which is more the problem I have with it. I don't have an issue with having badass characters, but that should come as the result of a lot of experience in-character, through character growth and experience in the world, rather than automagically gifted to you due to the system you're using.

It's one thing to grow a character from 1st to 30th. It's another thing entirely to start at 30th.

Quote from: Cranewings;321210I think a lot of GMs just aren't adaptable enough to deal with the changing nature of a game.

Either that, or - to use your example - if I'm looking for a low-power martial arts game, I don't necessarily want it to go all Dragon Ball. I might want to keep it relatively low-power.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;321212It's more a matter of approach, too. If you start off as a badass right out of the gate, 4e-style, then the fact that you're a badass loses a lot of meaning - you take it for granted that you're awesome. Which is more the problem I have with it. I don't have an issue with having badass characters, but that should come as the result of a lot of experience in-character, through character growth and experience in the world, rather than automagically gifted to you due to the system you're using.

It's one thing to grow a character from 1st to 30th. It's another thing entirely to start at 30th.

Not sure I agree with that one. Plenty of games start you off powerful. the idea that in an RPG you start of small and have to work your way up isn't written in stone. When I GM'd WoD, or Amber or x many other games I often give the players a high power level to start with. I mean if I am watching Dirty Harry , I want Harry to be a kick arse I don't want to have to sit through the 3 prequels when he goes to cadet school arrests flytippers and eventually gets his big break. The GM secret is to make the challenges interesting and make the players think. In a Supers Game if the players are too tough then twist it a little make it more of an investigation. You can't remove all situations where the players have the upper hand, its a bit shit if you have built a warrior and the game turns out to be a courtroom drama and  all those points/lucky rolls you spent/made are worthless, but you can mix it up.
If I get a powergamer (the other types apply just as well)  in a game there are a couple of options. If they are good and roleplay as well as crunching the numbers then I will indulge them let them shine but hit them with stuff that they can't match head on (you know magic resistant bad guys, or Shadow creatures that hit you with spells but can't be harmed physically, or creatures that spew acid when hit that erodes weapons or causes burns or whatever). If they are dicks as well as being Powergamers I tend to 'rule' them out. Basically use the very rules they rely on to boss the game to beat them. No reason why the bad guys can't use grapples and trips and snares and no reason why enemy wizards can't use varieties of bigby's hand spells to undo bel buckles, tie laces together, an evil scientist can easily create a nano-cloud that disolves soft tissue.
The only unsolveable quandry is when you join a group and the powergamer is the best mate of the GM and the entire plot seems to be a way for the powergamer to acquire as much loot/Xp/prestige/stuff as possible in as short a time as possible. If that happens then well the only thing you can do is walk away.

Here are my random, disjointed thoughts about the matter:

- The problem with wankers* is not that they want to play very powerful characters, because they don't. If they did, they'd just happily play some superheroes game or Nobilis. What they want, instead, is to be more powerful than than the setting itself is. If it's a WFRP game, they want to operate on the power levels of late-edition D&D. If it's D&D, they want to have supers. If it's a supers game, they want Nobilis characters.
It's not the high power that gives them their hard-on, it's sticking out.** They're just a subset of Special Fucking Snowflakes, nothing more, nothing less.

- Someone above mentioned the DM's responsibility to "adapt" and keep up with player advancement. Well, if someone wants to do that and transform their Kung-fu game into a DragonballZ game, good for them, but that doesn't address the issue that some people don't want to turn theirs into that.

Here, I think, at least partial blame lies on the linear advancement nature of certain game systems such as D&D. If you have two times as many levels, you have two times as many HP, twice as high an attack bonus, twice as many spells, whatever. If it's fifteen times as many levels, than fifteen times as much of all that. The problem with this is that character power rapidly spirals out of the range where the setting can handle it. Once the party is 15th level, you'll need 15th level enemies to challenge them, and then you face the uncomfortable question of where these 15th level villains had been hiding until just now, and how come they haven't already taken over the world.

One example that has some built-in safeguards against this - not the best example, but probably the best known - is early editions of D&D. The gain of direct power follows the law of diminishing returns, so it's hard to get very far ahead of the rest of the universe on the power curve. Yay, your fighter is 20th level against my 15th, you have 10 more hit points! Instead, characters get new options: strongholds, followers, all sorts of alliances and contacts they gather during their - and consequently, now they can be put up against problems that simply cannot be solved by munchkinny brawn, but only by recourse to these new types of resources.



*The word being, for the purposes of this post, a collective noun for the 'bad' kind of munchkins, minmaxers and powergames.
** Ha-ha, "hard-on" "sticking out". Someone give me a rimshot.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;321213Either that, or - to use your example - if I'm looking for a low-power martial arts game, I don't necessarily want it to go all Dragon Ball. I might want to keep it relatively low-power.

Please, everyone wants to play Dragon Ball.

Premier, I always wanted to mod Dungeons and Dragons so that Armor Class and Hit points both improved with level, but only slightly. The problem with that is that all the spells and monsters will be jacked up and disproportionate.

This identifies my dislike for recent TRPG trends in a form I can work with.

Quote from: Premier;321403** Ha-ha, "hard-on" "sticking out". Someone give me a rimshot.

:emot-rimshot:

You're welcome.

Quote from: Cranewings;321507Premier, I always wanted to mod Dungeons and Dragons so that Armor Class and Hit points both improved with level, but only slightly. The problem with that is that all the spells and monsters will be jacked up and disproportionate.

Well, spell progression will need to be tweaked, true. But monsters shouldn't be a problem, you'll just use fewer of them and the party'll have to be smart and solve some situations without combat. There's no law that says a giant must be something your X-level party can take on in groups of 3-4; it's perfectly fine to have a giant which your X-level party needs to run away from even when it's solitary.

Quote from: jibbajibba;321384Plenty of games start you off powerful. the idea that in an RPG you start of small and have to work your way up isn't written in stone.

You're right, it's not. But it is my preferred style.

Quote from: PremierThe gain of direct power follows the law of diminishing returns, so it's hard to get very far ahead of the rest of the universe on the power curve. ... Instead, characters get new options: strongholds, followers, all sorts of alliances and contacts they gather during their - and consequently, now they can be put up against problems that simply cannot be solved by munchkinny brawn, but only by recourse to these new types of resources.

An interesting question, I think, would be: why has this kind of power increase fallen by the wayside in favor of direct numerical improvement?

Quote from: CranewingsPlease, everyone wants to play Dragon Ball.

Not really...

Quote from: GnomeWorksAn interesting question, I think, would be: why has this kind of power increase fallen by the wayside in favor of direct numerical improvement?

Linear numerical progression does have diminishing returns built right in doesn't it? Let's say you're playing 3.x. Going from level 1 to level 2 doubles your hit points (or multiplies it by 1.5 if you go for that max first die crap). Going from level 15 to 16 multiplies your hit points by 1 and 1/15.

And didn't later iterations of D&D rely even more heavily on entirely new abilities as you gained levels?

The thing that's fallen by the wayside (or, more accurately, is more a function of setting and adventures than rules anyway) is stuff you earn directly through play. The one thing in this category people tend to keep track of is cash. Otherwise, most games have few if any rules for things like contacts, influence, and reputation.

Quote from: beejazz;321688The thing that's fallen by the wayside (or, more accurately, is more a function of setting and adventures than rules anyway) is stuff you earn directly through play. The one thing in this category people tend to keep track of is cash. Otherwise, most games have few if any rules for things like contacts, influence, and reputation.

Wouldn't having rules for contacts and such just make it into another "number" that everyone tries to keep improving?

Quote from: GnomeWorks;321863Wouldn't having rules for contacts and such just make it into another "number" that everyone tries to keep improving?

Quite a few games have rules for this sort of stuff. The old WoD rules have all their rules for fame, wealth, contacts etc etc Amber has devotees and contacts and other stuff. FGU games used to have a range of subculture skills that woudl let you gain information from your contacts in different areas (law enforcement, entertainment, criminal, political etc).

Quote from: GnomeWorks;321863Wouldn't having rules for contacts and such just make it into another "number" that everyone tries to keep improving?

I'd expect it would... which is part of why I don't see any need for specific rules regarding those aspects of the game. I'd rather that stuff happen organically... relationships formed between the PCs and NPCs rather than 'you did X many tasks for Y therefore your Y-rep stat has increased to Z.'